Anthropic Case Attorneys Request $302 million in Fees and Expenses
We’ve previously covered the Anthropic class action case. The lawsuit was over the artificial intelligence platform Anthropic’s use of copywritten material. The settlement includes $1.5 billion, about $3,000 for each instance of use. If an author has 3 books that were used by Anthropic, they’d receive $9,000 as an example. The plaintiff’s lawyers have asked a federal judge for $300 million in attorney fees plus expenses of about $1.97 million and $17 million reserve fund for future expenses. That’s around 20% of the settlement. There’s also a request of $50,000 for each of the three named plaintiffs in the case.
The motion was filed and they attorneys claim their 20% is “markedly below” the 25% benchmark usually given. Class counsel from Susman Godfrey and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP would split 75% of the fees award.
The lawyers state they’ve spent more than 18,000 hours on the case which comes out to about $16,700 an hour.
